Power outage notification is a valuable feature for applications like computer-automated power distribution systems (e.g., “smart grid”) and home healthcare monitoring. A power outage notification to a smart grid application can help improve operational efficiency and customer service. Current power outage notifications may rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. However, the granularity of the power outage location in such systems is limited to the transformer level, which can cover a large area. That is, when the transformer detects loss of ‘load’ it will trigger an alarm. Often the power outages are at a particular street or a specific address, which may go undetected at the transformer level until the customer calls to complain.
Home healthcare applications such as elderly care or chronic care rely on sensors in the home to transmit patient vitals such as blood pressure, pulse oximetry readings, etc. at a regular interval. The vitals are sent via a broadband connection through a wired and wireless modem or a gateway. If a monitoring application does not receive the vitals within a certain time interval, it creates an alarm to dispatch emergency medical help. A power outage in the home may create a false alarm due to broadband router shutdown.